It's been a tumultuous week in Claire-land, and as it's finally July, I've sat down to review my yearly budget, my tax withholdings, my goals (both personal and professional), and my savings accounts.  I also took the time to consider what obligations that I give my time to when I'm not at work and whether I could still sincerely uphold those obligations without killing myself or diminishing my standard of living.

So, to start, I pulled my last six months of bank records and uploaded them into a spreadsheet, sorted by category, and made a graph.  It made me wince -- we'll just say that -- in how much I had spent on gas and car maintenance in the first half of the year.  I also pulled up the IRS's calculator for withholding taxes and plugged in the withholding to date off my paystub.  The good news is that I need to make no adjustments to my withholding and I probably won't have a huge return in April.  I closed a couple of my sub-savings accounts, now that the goals had long passed and I was no longer putting money into them, then considered what I wanted to do over the course of the next year.  I opened three new sub accounts to drop cash into: one for a vacation in December sometime, one for my credit card payoff, and one for a new, pretty, comfy convertible couch for my uber-small living room.

Sure, all sensible things - I'm sure you all are nodding your heads in agreement.  Well, except, perhaps, the couch - I want a red couch, which is not sensible at all, and it mustn't have any of those stupid bars that bite into your back when you fold the mattress out. 

But the true experiment of this last weekend was figuring out what I'm really worth per hour; it helps put my goals and motivations into perspective to be able to say, "I work X amount of hours to pay my rent" or "My couch means I have to work X number of days."

Here's how to figure out YOUR hourly worth (using an example of my bestest friend Jamie, who earns salary of $100,000/yr.  I think it would be slightly unethical for me to post my actual salary on any blog, let alone my professional one):

1. Jamie earns $100,000/yr gross on a commission basis doing photography for weddings.
2. Jamie's tax bracket is 25%, meaning her net salary is actually $75,000/yr.
3. Considering that Jamie works eight hours a day with a one hour lunch and a 45-min commute and an hour of prep for work each morning, Jamie spends 11.5 hours everyday in relation to work.  Thankfully, she doesn't take work home, or this number would be higher!
4. There are, on average, 260 working days a year.  Multiplying 260 by Jamie's 11.5 hours/day, Jamie works 2990 hours a year.
5. Taking into account that Jamie spends about $100/month on clothing for work, $150/mo on gas for her car, $100/mo on maintenance for her car, $100/mo on various expenses for work to include supplies, and rents a studio for $300/mo for portrait taking, Jamie spends, on average, $760/mo or $9120/yr on expenses relating to work.
6. Finally, taking Jamie's net salary ($75000/yr), subtracting her expenses ($9120/yr), then dividing by hours worked (2990/yr), Jamie's actual hourly wage is $22.03/hr.  

This is a pretty big change, considering that her job was advertised at approximately $48/hr when she took it; Jamie's actually working for less than half what the sticker price said.

This particular exercise is something I do every six months or so to determine whether my time is well-spent at work, at home, volunteering or otherwise, because considering how much you make an hour helps put into perspective what you spend time and money on, especially when you start comparing it to bills:

• Jamie pays $1400 in rent ($1400/$22.03/24hrs) and must work eight standard eight-hour days to pay for it.
• Jamie's car payment is about $400/mo.  She must work two and a half eight-hour days to pay for it.
• Jamie's commute is worth $250 worth of gas and maintenance on that car.  She has to work at least a day and a half to pay for that.

A day, you say, well that's nothing!  But if you compare it to how happy you are, it's actually quite a bit of something.  As Jamie's 45-minute commute is spent seething in frustration at the other idiots in East Coast traffic, she's really spending $250/mo to learn new cusswords and flip radio stations in an effort to stay calm.  How is that for perspective?  How about this:  Jamie is wasting eighteen days every year and spending $3000 to learn new cusswords and flip radio stations.  Eighteen 24-hour days! $3000! 

Tell me, folks...what could you do with eighteen more 24-hour days every year?  How about $3000?  What would you do with an extra hour and a half every day?  Those are the questions I ask myself when I have these personal budgeting sessions - not just 'what would I do with', but 'why do I spend money on that'?

Currently, I have three volunteer obligations outside of work and two other extremely low-paying semi-volunteer gigs, taking up a solid five of seven nights a week.  When I consider what my time is worth, it really makes me pause to reflect on whether I'm spending my time well, and whether I'm truly happy running around the city.

This time, I've decided to decrease one of my obligations by a half hour and one of my obligations by a full hour, giving myself a few extra hours each month to write.  Since my passion really is writing, an hour and a half could mean 10000 words on a novel I want to get published.  I think about it as paying myself - I'm worth my time.

So I have to ask, Gentle Readers, when you consider how much your time is worth - however you quantify it - are you spending your time on things that make you happy?  Are you spending your money wisely?  When looking over your goals, are you working toward them, or just placing them on a shiney pedestal to look at?